Kamen says the current Beacon is intended for businesses like laundries or restaurants that use a lot of hot water. “With commercialization partner NRG Energy, he’s deployed roughly 20 of the machines and expects to put them into production within 18 months,” says Forbes.

But Kamen has bigger plans: feeding excess power to the grid by networking devices across a region together. Depending on the price of natural gas, “ten years from today the probability that you are depending on wires hanging on tree branches is as likely as that you’ll still be installing land lines for telephones,” he says. “Close to zero.”

Thanks for the link, peterspm. All I got from the article was that it gave three times the mileage but was too pricey for Detroit to put into production…but was this true?

Back when I was a student in 1972, a sociology instructor pointed out that Detroit had $80 billion invested in building piston engines and would not let all that go to waste by looking into more advanced technologies.

In fact, that was what everybody was saying back then. Now look at Detroit.

What possible advantage can a Sterling engine with it’s friction losses, moving parts, thermodynamic cycle losses along with the associated generator, etc. have over a Bloom box? The one place a Sterling might make sense would be where there is already a source of otherwise waste heat such as geothermal or a solar boiler — even then, a steam turbine probably makes more sense. I suppose the Sterling could make lower temperature use of a steam turbine’s exhaust, but at high cost relative to it’s generating capacity. Or it might make sense in a very cold place like Antarctica with a virtually unlimited cold sink for the condensing end. This looks to me like another solution in search of a problem like that Segway thing was. We can all see how those took off — what a joke when compared to the pre-release hype. Just because a device uses a new or old or otherwise uncommon technology does not mean it is likely to have any real-world economical application.

Natgas and Stirling engines could be a bridging technology. Solar is a great dream, but the future doesn’t arrive in one mighty leap. Techies and the wealthy adopt, economy of scale cheapens, then it moves on out in fits and starts, at different speeds to different places. While we wait for cheap, global solar for everyone, this is a good bridge.

From everything I have read on these pages it ought not to be too long before solar voltaics spurred on by the developing field of meta materials will be producing electricity at a price point highly competitive with fossil fuel. Further from the same stable, cheap efficient batteries. At that point everything changes.

He’s heard of solar or wind. We all have – for decades – and their percent of energy consumption can be still be shown with one hand. The problem is economic viability and this is the enormous advantage of this engine besides (of course) the intermittent nature of wind & sun. In fact, the Sterling engine is currently used to convert solar into electricity today.

Even though I must admit that I am happy to see the buses here in Syracuse running on natural gas, when I see the dangers of fracking, I would like to get away from natural gas and get into generating power and heat with hydrogen split from water with photo-voltaic cells.

In eight to twelve years when robots are printing out copies of themselves, it will be cheap enough to dig up the front lawn or the back yard to instill a hydride tank to store the gas you make in July to keep you warm in January.

But how big does the tank need to be? How much hydrogen will it take to heat your home from Halloween to April Fool’s Day? Will people with small houses on small lots in old working class neighborhoods in the Northeast (like my neighborhood) be able to store enough gas for the cold months?

One thing this article doesn’t mention, that this generator could heat a house with all of that hot water. Maybe the authors are all too young to remember steam heat coming up into radiators shaped like Popeye’s accordion.

If you research further you’ll discover that this particular model is NOT for the “average” home. It is used now in his home because it is large and has a swimming pool that must be heated but this is one for a large business (10KW vs 2KW for home use). they are in the process of developing a 2.5 KW version that could be used for homes. His goal was philanthropic – to provide energy to poor people – and it’s interesting that the US is among the last to look at this engine (or maybe not so interesting considering the lobbying). A good site with the latest information:http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/07/02/dean-kamen-thinks-his-new-stirling-engine-could-power-the-world/

Our glorious leader put a price on sunshine soon after getting into power. It’s why we are also in an economic crisis and must get rid of all the science, education, hospitals, poor, disabled and those dreaded “boat people”.

His power of anti-science is so strong he has warped the entire continent into a bubble that no longer corresponds to the known laws of physics!

He is so great he is also the minister for women, telling us they love their ironing and kitchen duties, and the minister for aboriginals, informing us recently they never settled this continent. His is wise, much smarts.

In my country, Australia, we have abundant natural gas but because our prices are now pegged to international markets gas has become so expensive that power producers are switching back to burning coal because it is cheaper!

However, a domestic scale, solar thermal, Stirling generator/water heater, if affordable, would sell very well. We do have a lot of free sunshine here, most of the time.